Never Ending Stories
Posted By Vonna on September 21, 2009
Remember the book The Never Ending Story by Michael Ende?
When I’m working on a novel, that title frequently comes to mind. I don’t want to bog down my book with backstory, but some characters have such interesting histories that I can’t leave their tales to linger untold. So I write them out.
In one of my novels, a fantasy, each kid in a group of friends has an animal familiar. It wouldn’t serve my novel to recount how each character acquired his or her familiar, but it was important for me to know, so I wrote the tales of their first meetings as a series of mini-stories.
Most of the peripheral characters have their own background. In order to understand why my villains did what they did, I needed to go back to their childhoods to understand the origins of their evil motives. Then there were the other characters who needed reasons for why they risked helping these kids, or why the kids had to help them.
So, as research for this particular novel, I wrote six mini-stories, five short biographies and a series of poems that represented one particular character’s world view. Through this process, I discovered the hopes and disappointments of each character and found the contrasts and comparisons that drew these people together or pushed them apart.
My current work is still being examined and dissected by my wonderful critique group. Before beginning the actual writing for this book, I had jotted down notes about each character. But while waiting for the input from my critique buddies, I am taking the time to go through this short story process. I have planned this story as a series, so it is important to fully understand each character from the beginning. Writing out their individual histories makes that happen.
Besides, I don’t need to worry about whether these short stories ever get published. And that makes writing them fun.
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